


Through the Years

by supersapphics



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Post-Canon, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 06:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20003695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersapphics/pseuds/supersapphics
Summary: Clary and Maia falling in love in several different lifetimes.Or: After the events of SE03E22, Clary, who still doesn't have her memory back, finds herself having repeated dreams of the same woman. She doesn't know anything about her, except for one fact: in every single dream, they're head over heels in love.Could it be that these dreams are more than just dreams?





	Through the Years

**Author's Note:**

> This is another contribution for Team Blue, fulfilling the prompt "reincarnation"!
> 
> A few people asked for me to write this fic for Claia, so I tried to create a balance between acknowledging the racism/homophobia that would have existed during their past lives and also showing how the two of them are always on each other's sides and ready to fight side by side, no matter what lifetime they're in. I hope I did a good job with the balance and that one didn't overpower the other. Feel free to let me know in the comments!

It starts out slowly, enough so that at first, Clary can pass it off as nothing but her imagination. It’s little things, like when she’s painting in class and she’ll suddenly get the urge to paint a woman with curly black hair and a laugh to outshine the sun.

Or she’ll be walking down the street and she’ll see a splash of color out of the corner of her eye, and she’ll think, _Oh, that color would look great on her._ Then she’ll pause and wonder, _who’s her? What made me think that?_

 _The lingering remnants of a dream,_ Clary tells herself, and at first she believes it, because what other alternative is there?

But then these silly, nonconsequential moments begin happening with more and more frequency. She’ll find herself waking from vivid dreams, dreams of herself and another woman who she could've sworn she’s never seen before, but who nonetheless makes her heart beat faster with recognition and something startingly similar to…yearning?...every time she catches a glimpse of the woman’s face in her dreams.

She’ll wake, and spent the next couple of hours sitting up in bed, composing rough sketches of what she can remember from the dreams, adding more details here and there as they return to her. But anything beyond that escapes her.

She grows frustrated, not being able to explain to herself what it all means. There has to be some purpose to this, doesn’t there? You don’t just have recurring dreams about a person you’ve never met when there’s no reason behind it, do you?

In one dream, she and the woman are dressed in old fashioned clothes; Clary’s no history expert, but if she had to guess, she’d say the clothes come from sometime in the 19th century. They’re sharing food from a wicker basket, giggling and trading kisses every few moments. Clary has no idea how she can know this, but somehow her dream supplies the information for her – this is Clary’s family’s house, and Maia lives here with her adoptive father, Luke, who runs the household.

Maia – the name had also come to her in a dream, and the moment she’d heard it, it had just felt – right.

They’re hiding, the two of them, because they can’t be seen anywhere too close to the house. No one knows about them except for Luke, who keeps their secret, but they can’t trust anyone else to understand.

“One day we’ll find a way,” Clary’s dream version says. “It might take a long time, but one day we’ll find a way to be together without fear.”

Maia says nothing. There’s a small smile on her face, a smile that’s gently encouraging, but Clary knows her well enough to tell – Maia doesn’t believe a word she’s saying. She’s just too kind to say so.

“I know you don’t agree,” Clary says quietly.

Maia leans forward and cups Clary’s face in her hands. “I want to believe. And I love you for believing. Your pure heart is one of my most favorite qualities of yours. Can that be enough for you?”

“Any part of you is enough for me,” Clary whispers back, and leans in for a kiss. The dream dissolves, and Clary wakes up with a start, lunging for her sketchpad that she now keeps at the foot of her bed. She begins to sketch, desperate to capture Maia’s features before she forgets. Because she always forgets, shortly after the dream ends, and then she’s left feeling frustrated and incomplete until she’s blessed with the next dream.

“This isn’t right, and you know it!”

“Clary –”

“Why are you fighting me on this?! You know I’m right, you know how unfair it is that they’re refusing us this –”

“Clary, I think I know that better than anyone,” Maia interrupts. “After all, what you and all the other women are fighting for is so that _you_ can vote. You and the other white women. Not women like me or Aline.”

Clary can feel the color drain from her face. “No,” she chokes out. “That’s not true. I’m fighting so that _all_ women can vote, you and Aline included. You know that, right? You know me, you know I would never leave you behind…”

“I know that.” Maia clutches Clary’s hand within her own. “But you’re one woman out of hundreds. Your voice isn’t strong enough.”

“I can make it strong enough! My family is one of the richest and most powerful in New York and –”

“And I don’t want you bringing that kind of negative attention to your family,” Maia interrupts. “It would only invite danger and suspicion and I don’t want that for you. I want you to be safe. Please, Clarissa. Don’t do this for me. It’s not your fight.”

Clary stills. She knows Maia must be serious, because she very rarely uses Clary’s full name. She looks into Maia’s face, and sees nothing but fear and concern there.

“I want to fight for you,” she whispers. “I want to fight for us.”

“You know how much I love and admire you for that. But not everything can be your fight. You’re not responsible for saving me from everything. Sometimes I have to save myself. I hope you can understand.”

“If anything happens, I’m on your side,” Clary vows. “And I don’t care what kind of trouble it gets me in.”

Maia pulls her into an embrace. Fighting back tears, Clary buries her face into the warm skin of Maia’s neck. “I wish we could live in a world where our love for each other is accepted. But with every passing day, it becomes more and more difficult to believe that such a world could ever exist…”

Maia doesn’t reply, because what can she say that would make either of them feel better? She simply tightens her grip around Clary’s waist, and lets her tears fall against Clary’s neck.

When Clary wakes from the dream, her face is damp with the tears she’s shed and there’s an ache in her heart she doesn’t think can ever be healed.

Clary is yelling at someone. She doesn’t recognize the woman, but that doesn’t matter; her yelling at someone is fully in character.

Maia is next to her, and she’s yelling at the woman too. Maia says something about how she’s run into trouble with the police before, due to being black, but she had expected Shadowhunters to be more evolved. In the dream, Clary knows exactly what Shadowhunters are, but when she wakes, the word puzzles her. An extensive Google search tells her absolutely nothing.

The dream morphs, and Clary sees herself enter a restaurant she doesn’t recognize even slightly. She’s seen enough by now to realize that this dream takes place in the present day, which deeply puzzles her. It had been one thing to believe that maybe, just maybe, she was having memories from a past life – or lives, rather – but if this dream takes place in the present day, then why can’t she remember any of it? Why doesn’t she recognize any of the people, the places, or even the clothes she’s wearing? All she recognizes is Maia.

“Hey, Maia,” Clary says in the dream.

“Hey, Clary. Long time,” Maia says, nodding at her.

That confuses her too. They haven’t seen each other in a long time? In the previous dreams, they’d been inseparable.

The dream changes a few more times, showing her various times she’s interacted with Maia – her favorite is sitting next to each other in a restaurant, giggling and unable to take their eyes off each other – but none of them have the same aura, the same desperate need to be together, that the previous dreams have possessed. She can’t make sense of it. What had gone wrong this time? And more importantly, why can’t she remember?

She’s walking down the street, looking for any sign of – something. She doesn’t even really know what she’s looking for, just – something. Anything. She can’t stand these dreams anymore, these dreams of a love so powerful and eternal that it had lasted through generations. She doesn’t know how to feel whole anymore, not until she can get that love back.

She’s starting to get hungry, so she decides to step into the next restaurant she sees. It’s called Taki’s – she’s never heard of it before, but there’s a sign on the sidewalk outside advertising today’s specials, and she sees something about buratta salad – her favorite. She walks inside.

It’s fairly busy, but there’s an empty table in the corner, and all the waitstaff seem busy, so she decides to seat herself. She pulls a menu toward her, even though she’s fairly certain she’s going to order the salad, but it doesn’t hurt to double check. She can feel a frown appear on her face as she scans through the items. _These have to be nicknames,_ she thinks as she takes in names that sound like they’ve come out of a fairytale.

“Good afternoon, welcome to Taki’s.” Clary looks up at the sound of the new voice and freezes when she sees who’s speaking to her. It’s Maia. She’d never seen Maia’s face fully in the dreams, or if she had, she could never remember when she woke up – but now there’s not a doubt in her mind. This is her. The woman she’d been dreaming of for weeks, the woman she’d yearned for with every molecule in her body, despite being positive she had never met her before.

And more than that, Maia seems to recognize her too, if the stunned look on her face is any indication.

“Maia?” Clary whispers.

“You…can see me. You can see everyone in here? And…the building…”

“Of course I can see the building. How else would I come in? I just – I can’t believe I’m finally meeting you. Finally, after all this time…”

“I’m…” Maia sinks down into the chair opposite Clary’s. “How did you find this place?”

“I’ve been dreaming of you,” Clary explains, the words tumbling out of her in a rush. Now that she’s finally found Maia, she’s so excited that she can barely contain herself. “I don’t…I don’t remember much about my life. About six months ago I just found myself standing outside of this building I didn’t recognize, and I was crying, but I didn’t know why. I tried to go home, but my apartment was burned down and my mom…she wasn’t there. I couldn’t think of who to call. I couldn’t remember any names of friends, or family…it was like my mind was a blank. And then my phone rang, and it was this man named Magnus? I didn’t remember him either, but he seemed to know me. He took care of me, he…” Clary rubs her hands together, lost in thought, but when she looks up, Maia is staring at her very intently, like she’s very interested in hearing what Clary has to say.

“I went back to art school and at first I was happy, despite not being able to remember anything. I made friends and I was doing well in school, but then I started dreaming about you…”

“What kind of dreams?” Maia whispers.

“They were…it felt almost like…memories. Most of them took place in the past, like…a hundred and fifty years ago, and then during Suffrage, and after that…after that it took place in the present. But I couldn’t remember any of the things from the present. We were both there, you and I, but I just didn’t remember any of it. All I knew was how real it all felt. Like they were actually memories.

“That sounds crazy, I know,” she continues with a self-deprecating little laugh, looking down at her hands. “But I just couldn’t forget about them. Every time I woke up, I felt this ache, like a part of me was missing, and I just…had to find you. I wasn’t really expecting you to remember me too. But you do, don’t you? You recognized me as soon as you saw me, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Maia confirms. She still looks like she’s partially in shock, but after a deep breath, she seems to calm down somewhat. “I do know you. We used to be friends. Before you lost your memories.”

“Just friends?” Clary checks. “In the dreams, we were – we were in love.”

“I know. I had the dreams too.”

“You did? The same ones as me?”

“I think so. One of the dreams took place about a hundred and fifty years ago, I guess. You were the lady of the house and I worked for you, but –”

“We were in love.”

“Yeah,” Maia says softly. “We were. In every dream.”

“Except for the last one. You said we were just friends.”

“We were. We were both dating other people, so I guess that got in the way.” Maia chews her lower lip. “What you said about the dreams – that they felt like memories? That’s what it felt like to me too.”

“Like reincarnation?” Clary asks, chuckling a little. She can barely believe what she’s saying.

“I honestly don’t know,” Maia answers, chuckling too. “I just can’t believe that you were able to find this place. It’s such a coincidence that all of the restaurants you could choose when you have no memory, you walk into this one.”

“I didn’t need a memory of you. I had the dreams.” Clary leans closer to Maia. “Let’s just go wild for a second and say that the dreams really are memories of past lives. You and I have been madly in love with each other in at least two previous lifetimes. And the last time, we didn’t really get a chance. We were dating other people, you said, and then I lost my memories and we were separated – but the dreams brought us back together. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a huge sign from the universe to me. What do you think?”

Maia is quiet for a moment, and then she smiles. “I think you should order the buratta salad, and then we should talk some more. Get to know each other again.”

Clary grins back at her. “I like that idea.”

“Just a little bit more to the left, I think,” Maia suggests. Clary nods in silent agreement and together they maneuver the couch into the correct position.

“There! That looks perfect.” Maia looks around the room, pleased. A moment later, her girlfriend appears behind her and rests her chin on Maia’s shoulder.

“We’re really living together now,” Clary murmurs. “Now it’s going to be a lot harder to get rid of me.”

“As if I’d ever want to,” Maia shoots back, turning around and tugging Clary closer with her hands on Clary’s hips. “Besides, we’ve managed to find each other in multiple separate lifetimes. I don’t think the universe wants us to be apart either.”

“Who are we to disagree with the universe,” Clary says in a mock solemn voice.

Maia giggles. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” They kiss, softly, and when the kiss ends, rest their foreheads together.

“I told you once that I didn’t think we’d ever find a world where our love would be accepted,” Clary says after several moments of comfortable silence. “But now, only a century later, and I think we’ve finally found it?”

“Well…being a black woman in a relationship with a white woman isn’t easy even now in 2017. But it’s certainly easier today than it was the previous times we tried it. And who knows? Maybe in our next lifetime together it’ll finally be as easy as we always dreamed of.”

“And until then, we’re at each other’s sides, always,” Clary promises.

“Forever,” Maia agrees, and leans back in to seal the promise with a kiss.


End file.
